![[Chaos-Knoten]](knoten.gif){kind=small}
12. Chaos
Communication Congress '95
If you are against something, you do not need to establish a criminal organisation or highjack an airplane right away. For sabotage, creativity is the one most important thing.
The former communist German secret police simply spray-painted surveyance cameras with clear paint. This looked like a badly adjusted lense to the surveyorsand the consequently did not suspect anything to be wrong.
And there we are, talking about explosives. The speakers mentioned that the famous internet "Anarchist's Cookbook" and all the explanations on how to build bombs out of the now prohibited left-wing newspaper "Radikal" are rather harmless compared to the instructions that can be obtained directly from the legislative. They always offer their instructions with the intro: "It is forbidden to mix the following components....". Another source is any standard book on organic chemistry available in every bookstore.
Until recently, German saboteurs had to make a big fuss to work with remotely controlled bombs; this has now become an easy task thanks to nonymously available paging devices such as SCALL and QUIX. Best is a scall model with included vibrator, which can be replaced with a relais. The corporations originally selling the product are trying to hunt down the buyers ("why don't you take part in our great raffle drawing?"), but anyone who wishes can stay incognito.
After these excursions into explosive matters the participants talked about the less spectacular and less dangerous methods to sabotage computer systems.
Sabotage at the office - is this the place to try out all the tricks presented by Jens Ohlig and Frank Rieger? Any large office of a corporation offers a wide range of possibilities for the techno-terrorist. One of the good old ways to sabotage is the mug of coffee accidentally spilled over the keyboard. With just a little more creative energy, the extend ot such an attack can be enlarged. Gatorade and its sisters and brothers are much fiercer enemies to the electronic world. Even more professional is the use of a mixture of coke and salt, because thereaction will then be delayed.
Older keyboards, which still exist in many places, have other weak points. They are still equiped with a "AT/XT" switch, which will drive any system administrator crazy when changed, because he will have checked screen, harddisk, network server and more before thinking about it. The whole network will be down for several hours. If you are aiming for a longer system shut-down, it is not sufficient to simply hit the keyboard. The electrotoxin has to get into the system itself. An easy trick is a container with hydrocloric acid, placed right next to the air-entry of a computer's cooling system. If it is possible to get into the inside of a system, take out any chip and re-inert it turned by 180 degrees -that is a problem almost impossible to detect.
The floppy disk drive might also become a gateway for an innovative invasion. A disk otherwise seeming harmless might not only be infected with viruses, but also with a malicious ignition unit. Magnetic disks replaced by matchheads with the aid of sandpaper may change a disk into a highly specialized lighter. Secretarial terrorists with chemical knowledge may even use phosphorus which can simply be poured over the disk. Evenpolice systems are said to have gone up in flames while trying to deceipher confiscated disks. Somebody in the audience made a remark that the police has also performed its own attacks upon confiscated evidence by punching floppy disks before filing.
By now there are even computers which basically have a implicated self-destruction feature which leave the terrorists unemployed. The lithium ion-rechargeable batteries recently built into costly laptops lack loyality towards their new user by going up in flames when improperly recharged. This basically resembles a feature discussed at the CCC 94 last year: the "detoblaster", a card with a built-in explosive which detonates at the "tip of a key", e.g. when hitting Alt-F4. The meanest trick is putting a sensible computer system under high voltage. Even if the system is protected by a high-voltage-fuse, voltages above 50.000 volts are fatal. These can be produced with the Piezo-ignitions of normal lighters and can be stored in large condensers, found in TVs. Expensive, but useful are electroshock-devices which are sold for self-defence. Once in a while a system can be disturbed by the rubbing of a sweater over the outside of the computer.
But techno-sabotage is not restricted to computers. The voltage sent out by a Piezo-gaz-lighter also gets other devices to do funny things. Ther eis no limit to your creativity. Many devices are remotely controlled with infrared, for example the doors of some upmarket cars. Once it even used to be possible to pick up the opening signal of a door with a learning TV-remote-control and simply open the door later. This bug has been removed by now; however, a car may still be locked for ever with a strong overdose of nonsense-infrared signals. Ultrasound-motion-detectors, e.g. in cars, react not only when burglars come around, but also when dog-defense ultra-sound is used. Several alarm systems are easily irritated. Detectors for broken store windows react to a coin flipped against the glas. Some smoke detectors are able to distinguish between different smoke sources: they can do without flooding the building when confronted with a cigarette - but these detectors are scarce.
Intelligent thieves have even gotten stores to turn off their theft-detection-systems by giving out gift certificates with circuits that induced the detection to react. When it comes to destruction, the high-tech-armies of the world do not save. It is widely known that atomic explosions produce an EMP-effect which induces high voltages in electrical systems and therefore destroys them. The fact that such effects can be produced without g6atomic explosions is less known - not without reason. The physical law behind this reaction is kept secret: spreading rumours are most probably untrue. Frank Rieger mentioned weapons which are able to precisely destroy electronic devices or telephone lines up to 1000 km long from airplanes. Recently, he even saw an ad for a $3500 EMP-hand-device for private use. Until this device is available through mail order-catalogues, it is sufficient to place a laptop on an airline counter at the airport - you are immediately regarded as a terrorist. Even though many modern airplanes by now receive their control signals via fiberoptic lines, a laptop CPU which is compatible to the automatic landing signal of an airbus may move the landing route of the airplane by a few hundred meters.